


Transatlanticism

by orbitaldrop



Category: Mirror's Edge
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Isolation, Suicidal Ideation, but i really needed to post this somewhere, fic inspired by and written while listening to song of the same name, i promise this has a happy ending, this is honestly pretty personal to be posting in a fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 22:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9569687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orbitaldrop/pseuds/orbitaldrop
Summary: Fight oppression. Claim your freedom. None of that really means much when the real prison is inside your own head.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is essentially a rather self-indulgent exploration of mental illness in a society where glitz 'n glam, gritty realism, and edgy anti-corporate ideals rule everything else. I didn't even give the characters names.

Like an ocean, his loneliness spreads before him, his unnecessary guilt, his isolation. She used to keep him afloat, stop his head from sinking under the choking waves. But now she feels further away, and it's getting harder to reach for her. They're like tiny sailboats, lost, drifting helplessly among the waves, each tide shoving them further and further from each other.

He's terrified. He figures he might as well begin rowing away from her too.

\---

When he's scared, he does stupid things. Like now, for instance. He ignores her calls, deletes her messages, even ignores the persistent beeping of her notifications on his beatLink. He's trying to drive her away, and he both desperately wishes for it to work but also for her to ignore his silence and continue reaching out for him.

It's pathetic. He knows it is and loathes himself for it, but this is what he does: he purposefully destroys all the good in his life because he has to be the one to blame. He can't stain her soul with his own shameful nature--refuses to tarnish the purity he sees in her, in her gentle eyes and soft expressions. She's so brave and so persistent and all he knows how to do is run away from that, because those were never qualities he ever recognized in himself.

And when the silence is finally too loud and too long, weighing down every part of him, he hates and loves the distance between them, both utterly disgusted and completely satisfied at the beginning of the end of their relationship. The end of him.

This is what he deserves, and he knows it.

\---

The distance between them really is growing, he realizes. The length of the room is somehow too far for him to traverse, to reach out, to take her hand, to hold her against his chest once more. It's maybe twenty feet, but it's an insurmountable valley he'll never be able to cross, even with all his experience in leaping and flying and soaring over rooftops and dizzying gaps between skyscrapers.

It's easy. He can do this. He should do this. He should fix this break between them. For her sake, and his.

But he's afraid, he's a coward, and he's always been so scared of everything like this, of feeling this way. He can't. She feels so far away, separated from him by loneliness and grief and physical space that eats away at his insides. He watches her smile at their cabal leader and suddenly it's like he's watching her from behind a wall of glass, soundproof, unbreakable, impenetrable even by longing glances and yearning aches. A surge of vertigo grips him, shakes him to his core. His mouth tastes of ash and there is ice creeping up the inside of his skull, freezing his eyes over.

They lost each other along the way somehow. In between the covert operations and the espionage and the running, the loving glances they shared had diminished and the gentle brushes of their hands against each other at night faded away to grasping fingers and empty space. He doesn't know who to blame. If there's even anyone to blame at all. He realizes it's probably him.

It doesn't matter. There is no fixing this.

He expects to feel heartbroken at this realization. He knows he should feel intense grief, rage, frustration, disappointment. But he doesn't. He can't feel anything. This is how he knows it's time to go, time to start fresh. It's the same way it's always been for him, just up and leave when he realizes this is not what he wants.

That night, he packs up and leaves. Silently. A ghost in the night. He doubts she'll even notice. He wishes he didn't care whether or not she notices.

At the door, he hesitates. It's absolutely quiet out, a silent cocoon of peace and calm, but something pulls him back. He turns and looks, gazing upon the lair, memorizing it, committing his home to memory. He could always come back, but he knows he won't. Not while she's here.

The sight of the sleeping figures, lined up on cots and low beds, is so familiar and comforting that he smiles. Unbidden, he finds himself seeking out her place.

And of course, she sits up right then, and her shadowy figure is outlined by the smooth and milky moonlight in the most poetic way, an image that he knows will stay emblazoned in his mind for the rest of his life. He can practically feel the comforting warmth of her skin, read the soft sleepiness in her eyes that always pulled him in, feel her silky hair tickling his arms as he holds her close. He senses her eyes watching him, ever unreadable, and oh how badly does he want to stay. He wants to be with her, draw out this moment into a thousand eternities. It feels like home, it feels like finally, it feels like everything he never knew he wanted/needed until now. He's aching in ways he doesn't have words for, and ways he's never felt.

It's a moment, frozen in time. His heartbeat drowns out every other sound and he wonders if she hears it too, the way it beats for her, the way the distance between them is begging for him to close it. But if he doesn't leave now, he knows he never will. He hates himself more for it. For being weak. For completely destroying one of the best things in his life. But he's self destructive and impulsive and he doesn't know what he wants, never has; he doesn't know what can make him whole again but he knows it's not a person. Not even one he loves. So he takes one last, long look, neither of them moving, and he's gone.

Maybe one day he'll apologize to her, he thinks as the cold rain pelts his skin with icy prickles he can barely feel. One day, when they're both older, when he's not so ashamed of who he is and she's not disgusted by him, he can make things up to her. If he even makes it that far.

But for now, all he's going to do is the only thing he's ever done. He's going to push himself away. Away from her, away from them, away from himself.

He's going to run.

\---

He chooses to join up with the cabal furthest away from the lair, the furthest away from her, and no questions are asked when he walks in and speaks to the cabal leader, a beautiful young woman with rich sepia skin. She welcomes him in and he shoves his pack under the cot in the corner, knowing this is his home now. The one thing he's grateful for is this life of rebellion and freedom, the only life he knows he could bear to live and love.

And yet he's still thinking about how it would be even better with her.

Months pass, he makes friends, he sleeps and eats and runs and earns his freedom, chasing the sun, and yet he does not do the one thing he knows would be right to do: he doesn't contact her at all.

It's a silvery silence, the color of the moon above Regatta Bay on calm nights. He thinks it's beautiful.

\---

He hates the persistent noise of her calls, the way he shuts them off and pretends like they never existed, that he doesn't exist to her. But one day he's sick of pressing "end," and one day he patches it through, and one day he finally, finally talks to her.

The first thing he sees is the surprise written on her face. And then it's gone, replaced by a careful mask of detached politeness. He hates it. This is not how they should be. This is his fault, it's always all his fault--

"Hey," she says. And something inside of him stops, and melts.

"Hi," he says back. There's nothing else for him to say.

"So," she starts, and he braces himself. "Where are you?"

He dodges the question. It's an art he's mastered. "Here, for now."

She doesn't push him. He suspects that means she knows. "Are you... Are we okay?"

He half-laughs. "I don't know. I left, didn't I?"

Her sigh is as familiar as the wind. "You should have told me. We could have talked about it. Why would you do that?"

"I never thought it was the wrong thing to do," he says, and it feels like a dam has collapsed inside of him, a dam of words, of thoughts, of feelings. "I knew it wasn't right either, but I was scared, and I know you'll hate me for the rest of our lives but I know you would have hated me more for tying you down. If I had stayed, I mean."

Stark confusion crosses her face. He fakes ignorance. "Is that what you thought, that you were tying me down? How does that even make sense?" He can feel the indignation rising in her, and it's because he knows her better than he knows himself.

She deserves to know. He has to explain, but that means putting words to every single thing he hates about himself, and he knows that this unnatural level of self-loathing will drive her away even further than he could have hoped. And yet he's selfish enough to admit that he needs her, wants her, because he's a walking conundrum and she was the best thing in his life before this disaster. He will always hate himself, but in loving her he at least forgot about it, forgot about the reasons empty tears flowed from his eyes on certain nights as his entire self crumbled. But he doesn't want her to know that. She doesn't need to see it. Doesn't need to be forced into attending his miserable little pity parties.

He's a burden. He doesn't deserve her, not in the least. His mind is turning in circles, spiraling into extreme loathing of his entire being, so without a word he cuts the call once more and sinks further into misery.

\---

The word on the Beat is that she's been searching for him for a year now. And yet she's never come even close to finding him because this goddamned city is far too big, because some cabals are quieter than others, because he doesn't want to be found.

He keeps telling himself it's better this way.

\---

Running is still routine for him. The quick pounding of his feet against the rooftops, the squeak of his hands gripping cold rails, the thud of his body hitting the pavement and rolling, it's all still familiar, even though so much time has passed, even though so many runs and datagrabs have gone by. But the silence is new.

It's been a year and a half separated. She hasn't called him for weeks now.

His heart breaks from it. Even though this is what he wanted.

It's a glimpse of heaven, and a taste of hell.

\---

The day he thinks they're really over is the day they are, in fact, brought together again. Fate is cruel, he thinks. Fate also means well.

He's just gotten back from a quick run of one of his favorite dashes (Taking Flight--it involves running on the very sides of buildings, along catwalks, crossing near-impossible gaps with the MAG and feeling breathless as though you own the skies) and he's about to settle down for the night when he hears the familiar buzz of a KSec alert on the Beat.

He doesn't think anything of it. He's alerted KSec plenty of times on his own.

But suddenly--as fate would have it--there's a rapid crescendoing of footsteps outside the entrance to the cabal. He spins around just as the door slams open and there she is, right in his doorway.

It takes him a moment. Two. Three. The broadcasting monitor casts a soft white light over her slender form. She's like a ghost. He simply cannot believe he's seeing her here, where he never thought she would find him.

A thousand memories and dreams resurface. It feels like she's come to stop him, to bring him back, to reach out and take his hand again in all the ways he selfishly hoped she would. He remembers all the times he wishes she would have somehow crossed miles of white concrete just to find him again. And now, she has.

She looks good. Better than good. A year and a half apart and he never forgot her face, but memories can't bring to mind the way her lips part with surprise, eyes widening and sparkling in the soft light of the safehouse. In his peripheral vision he sees her lean arms and her long, slender legs, and he would marvel at her enviable form if he weren't so afraid that she'd disappear if he so much as looked away from her face. She breathes in and so does he, and then he does something that would have blown his mind years ago:

He doesn't run away.

\---

He finds himself standing on the edge of one of the many buildings overlooking Regatta Bay, where he first met her. It's dusk, even though the colors of the setting sun look like dawn, and the soft pink glow of the Nautical Adventures sign shimmers below, mirroring the quiet gleam of the ocean of stars in the sky. It can't look any more different than it did when he somehow found her sitting where he is now, when they met for the first time. It can't be any more different now either. They haven't spoken since she stumbled upon his safehouse weeks ago, not beyond that quiet short exchange that felt more like the formality of strangers meeting and not two former friends/best friends/lovers reuniting. Not kissing her then felt a little bit like dying.

A sigh escapes his lips as he folds himself into a sitting position, his legs dangling over the edge of the building. The many employs of Glass mill about below him, and he feels like a distant star, suspended in the sky, the citizens' motivations and lives as foreign to him as his own features in the mirror.

He can't stop looking down. He should be scared of heights. He was, when he was younger, even though he overcame it with practice. But now he's not afraid. He doesn't feel anything at all, hasn't for the past year.

The ground beckons him. The delicious impossibility of trying to survive such a fall whispers in his ear. All his life he's been holding on; maybe it's time to let go. He's not in control now, never was. He might as well succumb. She's not coming anyways. He wishes he would stop hoping she'd come find him.

He closes his eyes, takes a final breath. And he leans forward, pushing off with his hands--

A pair of thin and wiry arms slam around his chest, forming an inescapable cage that hauls him backwards, back to safety, back to life. The pale moon blurs in the indigo sky as his eyes snap open, arms flailing as he sprawls back onto the rooftop. The glass panes are cold underneath his fingertips, registering like the shock of cold water, setting his nerves alight. He coughs, struggling for breath, as his rescuer inhales shakily.

"Oh my god," she cries, trembling like a leaf in the wind. He's frozen for a second, an era, an eternity. She came back for him. It's her. "Oh my god."

Reality slams down on him with all the force of a thousand hard landings, the terrible truth of what he's just attempted to do. Her voice pierces him like a shard of glass. He doesn't cry, he doesn't let tears of his own fall as she does. But he cradles her close in his arms and holds her, and it feels like the beginning of maybe something better, something good and whole, and he silently promises to bridge this distance between them, because this, this is worth fixing.

He will never, ever let it get this bad again.


End file.
